Ikea Shenanigans by Noodles and Beef

1. What’s the first thing you see when you open your eyes?
a) Alarm clock
b) Wife
c) Sign on bedside table advertising interest-free credit on all headboards until 2015

2. Somebody else is in bed with you. Is it:
a) Life partner
b) Cat
c) Elderly couple that smell of charity shops, testing the matress for firmness

3. What’s the worst thing that happens when you get up for a mid-sleep tinkle?
a) Minor bleary-eyed spillage onto toilet carpet
b) Forget to wash hands
c) Escorted from premises by security

4. You are suffering from insomnia. Do you:
a) Read a book
b) Adjourn to the study to work on your pet project – a wholly unauthorised and largely fictional biography of television’s Bradley Walsh
c) Take the lift down to electricals and do some research on the benefits of 2-slice versus 4-slice toasters

5. You have a recurring dream in which you are running naked in a public place. Is it most likely to be:
a) School
b) Your workplace
c) The roof of Debenhams, surrounded by police. There’s a helicopter too.

Day #2 Fireworks by .allieee

Steal from friends.

Do you have a friend who is an obssessive vinyl collector? Who proudly shows off their neatly filed, carefully alphabeticised, colour-coded, genre cross-referenced collection whenever you visit? Sure you do – so why not snafffle a couple of choice items while they’re in the bog on your next visit? This technique is also commonly referred to as ‘borrowing’, as in “Hey can I borrow this for a couple of weeks, I’ll do a copy and bring it back next time I’m round”, the reply to which is usually “Yeah, course you can, no problem”, accompanied by a heavy inner sigh coupled with the resignation that you will in fact never clap eyes on said item again before Satan gets his ice skates on.

Steal from Charity Shops.

Your local chazza shop is a goldmine of useless tat, hideous odours and potentially, priceless gems just waiting to be uncovered amongst the Hot Hits compilations from the seventies and copies of Now 4 (one record missing). Charity shop employees, with an average age of 98, are legendarily the most flat-footed pursuers of opportunist thieves on the high street, so help yourself to an armful of vinyl safe in the knowledge that your getaway needn’t break in to more than a casual saunter.

Actually, don’t do this, it’s really wrong and immoral and so on.

Offer sexual favours to record pressing plant production line employees.

Why faff around when you can feed your passion by going straight to the source for your fresh, hot vinyl? Probably, many employees of such establishments are male, so if you too are male, this may involve some temporary homosexuality. They won’t have a problem with this, as even at these far-flung reaches of the entertainment industry, it’s well known that most people do in fact tend to be quite fruity. If you have an issue with this, perhaps you should be looking for another hobby. What’s the problem, huh? Don’t like gays or something? Some kind of queer-bashing hate-mongerer? That’s it, I’m calling the police.

Bonus Tip: Microwaves are friendly!

If ever I want to shrink something, I put in the microwave. This is ideal for all those 12 inch albums you may own that were full of filler tracks – just pop it in for 267 seconds, Gas Mark 99 and Defrost, your back catalogue of tedium is reduced to just the singles, and that one with the cool bongo fill around 2:38.

It’s hardly surprising they can’t get their shit together enough to find a picture of “Dr Hoffman” either. I’d have just stuck a photo of Belinda Carlisle up, nobody’s going to notice.

Step 1: Contrary to popular belief, you should wait until the dead of night before even thinking about opening your make-up box, bag or hidden floorboard compartment.

As you can see, I will be applying my slap tonight under cover of darkness. Look out the window; is it dark? Don’t be afraid to fly in the face of convention – most experts agree (not that they would let the ‘mainstream’ know), it is always better to apply make-up under dim, artificial light. In fact, turn all the lights off. By saving electricity, you’re making an important contribution to the fight against global warming. Pour a glass of wine to congratulate yourself.

Step 2: Let’s get started. Now, it’s understandable that you may feel the need to purchase an incredibly expensive foundation marketed by a multinational swank-emporium in order to provide a good ‘base’ to work on.

Rubbish. Your FACE is the BASE. Have acne? Pah! Bit blotchy from all that wine we just opened (you should have finished glass 2 at this point)? Au naturel is the theme here.

These are cost-conscious times, and even the top cosmetic peddlers are cutting back. Stay ahead of the fashion curve with this exclusive tip: STICKERS. Glamming up with a few well-placed adhesive illustrations really draws attention away from blemishes and puffiness.

I’m modelling a few choice examples from CBeebies magazine here – £2.50 every Wednesday for christ sake – but feel free to go for a cheaper alternative, such as corporate branding you may find on an everyday bunch of bananas (‘Fyffes’ are in) – or, make your own, for real individuality.

Step 3: The key to lipstick application is that there is no such thing as too much. Be bold. A slash of bright red lippy sends a strong signal – I am a sexual being, and proud of such. Do not be afraid to express yourself!

It’s a good idea to shave before this step – but you should be on glass 3 by this stage, and there could be repercussions.

Don’t be afraid to experiment here. I have improvised with a couple of swipes to the side-brow area – why not try the same across the eyes, or for maximum effect, using lipstick across the entire facial area? Obviously, my example is quite subtle, but try blending in with a little margarine spread across the brow area (Botox is so passe), or even a combo of several colours (stripes are big)?

Step 4: It can be disheartening when even after following these instructions for several minutes, you may not be quite as attractive as you had hoped (try opening another bottle of wine, and repeating).

Rumour has it that ‘digital manipulation’ is used to make many celebrities, who may otherwise be judged as ‘actually, quite ordinary’, look far better than otherwise might be the case.

Now, I’m not sure if this is true -surely celebrities wouldn’t lie to us – but why not Photoshop such a celebrity directly onto your face? I’ve provided a handy template in the image above, onto which I personally plan to embed a Flash slideshow montage of covers torn off the front of aspirational magazines in WH Smiths.

My submission of ‘Chicken and Egg’ flavour seems to have fallen by the wayside, so I’m off to the nearest competitor they haven’t consumed yet, along with the secret recipe I’ve been preparing in the rat and salmonella-festooned galley of the good ship Sandwiches Corner.

In the name of research I’m taking a few of these new flavours with me, and my preliminary findings are:

• Chilli and Chocolate - pretty awful. Start well enough, but the kind of thing that makes you want several glasses of water the nearer you get to the bottom of the bag. I put vinegar on them and they were a bit better.
• Cajun Squirrel – could be anything – Mexican Slipper, Ukrainian Sideboard, Martian Dirt – tastes like some cardboard dipped in a mystery bag of ‘exotic’ herbs and spices which are actually pavement-flakes collected from the paws of stray dogs
• Builder’s Breakfast – the worst thing I have ever tasted. A flavour so bad you wouldn’t even serve them to Hitler. Perhaps he invented them.

photo credit: waldopepper

However, there were 2 books in the series not even published in English. I know, I was amazed too.

Mr Crosspatch (or ‘Monsieur Bagarreur’) is just a fucked up perversion of all-time MM icon Mr Bump, so we’ll gloss over that. This is the guy who’s rocking my world: Mr No, or far more charmingly, Monsieur Non.

Now there’s someone for the kids to look up to – a bastard Frenchman who embodies negativity to such a degree all he just says no to the damn lot of it.

A new hero is born. A $200m Hollywood reimagining in which Monsieur Non is transplanted to LA and is helped by humble bistro-waitress Kirsten Dunst to get back in touch with his positive attitude surely beckons.

Desperate times these may be, but I’m still not handing over my lifetime savings of £17.45 and a bag of shiny buttons on the strength of a promise made by a weirdo on a billboard.

Oh I think it has

There are 2 main reasons I find ‘Andy Parsons’ – if that is his real name – somewhat dubious.

a) “Owning your first home has never been easier”? Really? Maybe in some parallel dimension it has, one so absolutely contrary to our own that dogs shit rolls of fifties and Mr. Tickle has just been appointed governor of the Bank of England. But probably not here.

b) You look fucked, man. What the hell where you drinking last night? Is it cheap? Where do I get it?

Scope yourself out a good cave now and get a shotgun, that’s what I say. I’m hoarding every last bag of Monster Munch in mine, in anticipation of the coming apocalypse, so if you were thinking of popping down the shop for a bag of Pickled Onion, forget it.

What the fuck am I doing here? What's that big blue thing? God, my legs are fucking killing me

Nevertheless, here it is, just as you didn’t expect, an enormous plywood Tardis-shaped cash cow presumably for the benefit of not only the BBC (who are already skating on thin ice as far as my licence contribution is concerned – and that’s just for their occasional employment of Lenny Henry – which yes, does also include when it’s for charity), but also for the owners of Britain’s most south-west extremity based family time-killing jamboree.

It’s the people running ‘The Lost Labyrinth’ next door I feel sorry for. Spend years building up a cave-oriented attraction and what happens – here comes Auntie to piss on your chips. Fair enough though, I wasn’t paying to go in either of them, even with the promise of a full scale animatronic diorama of William Hartnoll punching Peter Davidson in the nuts, mainly for abusing time-travel to return to a point just before lunch in order to steal his sandwich, but also just because he was a bastard.

Other attractions on display include a genuine Cornish rescue helicopter, mounted at such an angle as to suggest a plummet into the icy coastal waters is imminent, an impression aided by the admittedly effective decision to enhance the realism of the scene with two pilot mannequins, each disturbingly slumped over their controls as if having suffered simultaneous airborne heart attacks, which if I was capsized in the Atlantic or stuck up a cliff face, would seem to be just rubbing my face in an already trying situation.

Recovering from all the excitement whilst perched on one of the many finely crafted benches available, I actually overheard a fellow visiter grumble: “you come all the way here, there’s not even a lot to see, and the Dr Who merchandise is terribly overpriced”. Hopefully, someone involved in the planning of future attractions at Land’s End may happen to read this, and the penny will finally drop – what the people of Britain want is not staggering natural beauty, carefully preserved flora and fauna or the opportunity for calm reflection and contemplation whilst enjoying the diversity of local wildlife in it’s natural environment – what they want is cheap, pointless tat peddlers by the dozen, and as close together as possible, so they won’t have to walk too far. Slap down a Primark and a Maccy D’s and you’ll really be coining it in.

You may as well go on holiday in Croydon town centre, you fucking moron.